1 ASHLEY McGUIRE
Henry IV, Donmar Warehouse
In prospect, a female Falstaff seemed improbable. Yet Ashley McGuire was magnificent. Shouldering her way in a grubby vest from lewdness to pathos, she was one of the many triumphs in Phyllida Lloyd’s terrific all-female production at the Donmar.
2 GILLIAN ANDERSON
A Streetcar Named Desire, Young Vic
Anderson’s Blanche Dubois was both predatory and vulnerable. She came on to the stage at the Young Vic looking smart and beady in precarious stilettos. She betrayed delicate signs of distress, her fingers smoothing things down as if to take them under control. She collapsed violently, with her petticoats flying and her lipstick blotched over her face. She made an unforgettable exit, processing around the stage at audience level as if she were a duchess taking the air. Lying and aspiring to the end.
3 AOIFE DUFFIN
A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, Samuel Beckett theatre, Dublin
On a bare stage, in tousled pyjamas, Aoife Duffin embodied not only Eimear McBride’s tormented heroine but also her impaired brother, predatory uncle and neglectful mother. A powerhouse performance at the Samuel Beckett theatre during the Dublin festival.
4 CAREY MULLIGAN
Skylight, Wyndham’s
Mulligan made being on stage seem the most natural thing in the world. As the lefty schoolteacher in David Hare’s drama, she was gracefully contradictory: innocent and ironic, alluring and a bit of a pill. She may have made her name on the screen but at Wyndham’s she proved a boon to the theatre, where it is rare to look so effortless.
5 IMELDA STAUNTON
Gypsy, Chichester Festival theatre
At Chichester, Staunton got all the facets of Momma Rose: the gusto, the ruthlessness and the desolation. She was a female Napoleon, bristling with energy, shaking the words of her songs like a terrier attacking a rat. She softened as she sang with her beau, suggesting what she might have been if she had not always had to fight. She delivered Everything’s Coming Up Roses as if she were biting back a panic attack. A tiny figure with a big voice, she became not only the stage mother from hell but any mother who has sapped a child’s confidence by her own exceptional vim.
6 TIM PIGOTT-SMITH
King Charles III, Almeida
Pigott-Smith focused the wit and the penetration of Mike Bartlett’s innovative verse drama at the Almeida. He enjoyably hit off the mannerisms of the about-to-be king: the lopsided mouth, the earnest bending and the furrowed forehead. Yet he went well beyond mere imitation, and gave even this republican a pang of sympathy as he suggested intellectual seriousness, angst and – suddenly, surprisingly – darts of humour.
7 GRACE SAVAGE
Home, National Theatre Shed
The year’s most startling performance. In Nadia Fall’s play about an East End hostel, the champion beatboxer played a pregnant, homeless young woman. At the Shed she provided an insistent rhythmic commentary on the action with her explosive grunts and gutturals, spits and hisses. In doing so, she helped make an outstanding production of a remarkable play.
8 EILEEN O’BRIEN
Hope Place, Liverpool Everyman
Wry and understated, O’Brien was at the centre of Michael Wynne’s play, staged at Liverpool’s Stirling-prize-winning new Everyman. As an ageing family’s sacrificial lamb, she was hugely anxious and hugely sympathetic. Droll, too, as she shook the many pills in her dressing-gown pockets as if they were maracas.
9 REBECCA HUMPHRIES
Pomona, Orange Tree
Heavy with unhappiness, and utterly wary, Humphries was exceptionally convincing as a prostitute in Alistair McDowall’s dystopian drama. She was one of a top-notch young cast who lit up Ned Bennettt’s electrifying production at Paul Miller’s revivified Orange Tree in Richmond.
10 GEORGE MAGUIRE
Sunny Afternoon, Hampstead
Hampstead theatre’s first musical soared because of great Kinks numbers, a clever script on which Joe Penhall collaborated with Ray Davies, and really good performances. As Dave Davies, to whom he bore an uncanny resemblance, Maguire was galvanising. Feral and touching, he raced round the stage in a pink petticoat and a bad black bob. He was an anarchic imp who made his guitar look like a lethal weapon.
